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From Spreadsheets to Smart Solutions: A Top Canadian Retailer’s Sponsorship Overhaul with Elevent
Overview
For more than a century, this leading Canadian retailer has built strong connections with communities across the country. With $16.4 billion in annual revenue, , more than 10 consumer brands, and 1,700 retail locations, the company sought a more efficient way to manage its extensive sponsorship and community investment initiatives totaling tens of millions of dollars.
Balancing national corporate objectives with the unique needs of diverse brands and regions was challenging. The retailer needed a centralized yet flexible approach to ensure every investment aligned with both corporate values and local priorities.
Challenge :
With multiple brands operating across different regions, this leading Canadian retailer faced the daunting task of managing thousands of sponsorship and donation requests each year. Each request varied in size, scope, and strategic fit—ranging from small, one-time community donations to large, multi-year partnerships.
The company struggled with:
- Consolidating thousands of sponsorship and donation requests into a single,
streamlined evaluation and approval process. - Assessing proposals of varying complexity, from local grassroots initiatives to
high-profile, multi-year sponsorships, each requiring distinct evaluation criteria. - Evaluating a diverse range of proposals, from small, one-time donations to
complex, multi-year sponsorships, each requiring different assessment criteria. - Collaborating effectively across teams while balancing competing brand,
regional, and corporate objectives—without slowing down decision-making.
Over the years, the team developed a highly specialized decision-making approach using custom evaluation criteria. However, their elaborate Excel-based system was essentially manual, making proposal analysis cumbersome and measuring investment performance inefficient.
Seeking a data-driven partner to modernize its sponsorship management, the retailer invited several service providers to evaluate one of its properties. Elevent was the only company to produce an analysis that aligned with the retailer’s own findings—without inflating vanity metrics like impressions, which often skew sponsorship evaluations.
Solution :
To streamline its sponsorship and donation management, the retailer selected Elevent’s Brickroad™ Sponsorship Management solution. This platform provided the efficiency, customization, and automation needed to handle a high volume of requests while ensuring alignment with corporate, brand, and regional priorities.
Key features of Brickroad include:
1. Centralized Request Management & Team Collaboration
- Brickroad enables automated assignment of proposals based on
geotargeting and predefined rules, ensuring the right team members review
each request. - A cloud-based communication hub allows team members to access
proposals, track progress, and document decisions—improving collaboration
across departments. - Governance features, such as approval workflows, ensure transparency and accountability in decision-making.
2. Customization & Flexible Evaluation Criteria
- The platform provides custom-branded portals for different brands and
regions, offering a tailored experience for sponsorship applicants. - Teams have full control over evaluation and scoring criteria, allowing them to
prioritize opportunities based on specific business goals and market needs.
3. Automation & Efficiency Gains
- Brickroad automates repetitive tasks, including filtering out irrelevant
proposals, generating rejection emails, and assigning next steps. - The system significantly reduces manual workload, freeing up time for
strategic decision-making.
4. Data-Driven Insights & Security
- Brickroad provides real-time analytics and performance tracking, allowing
the team to assess ROI and adjust strategies as needed. - Built with industry-standard security protocols, the platform ensures data
integrity and compliance.
5. Seamless Integration with Existing Systems
- Brickroad’s compatibility with other enterprise tools ensures a smooth
transition and fast adoption across the organization.
By implementing Elevent’s Brickroad Sponsorship Management solution, the retailer transformed its spreadsheet-driven process into a scalable, automated system, significantly improving efficiency, consistency, and strategic alignment across brands and regions.
Results
Key Outcomes Include:
- 50–80% Reduction in Manual Workload
By automating proposal filtering, email responses, and task assignments, the team experienced immediate time and effort savings—freeing them to focus on high-value partnerships and strategic decision-making.
Centralized and Streamlined Request Managemen
- Custom-branded donation and sponsorship portals unified thousands of inbound requests across the company’s retail portfolio, ensuring a cohesive, organized intake process.
Smarter, Data-Driven Decision-Making
- Customizable scoring systems enabled the team to evaluate sponsorship proposals objectively, ensuring that every investment aligned with corporate, brand, and regional priorities. With better negotiating and optimization of the asset mix, the retailer maximized the value of its sponsorship investments while maintaining strategic alignment.
Enhanced Collaboration & Transparency
- Cloud-based tools facilitated seamless cross-team collaboration, allowing team members to track progress, share insights, and manage approvals efficiently across brands and regions.
Stronger Community & Brand Impact
- By aligning sponsorship and donation investments with local community needs and corporate goals, the retailer strengthened brand engagement, goodwill, and social impact across Canada.
A Multi-Purpose Solution
- Beyond sponsorship management, the retailer quickly repurposed the platform for its COVID-19 Response Fund. The system’s flexibility and configurable workflows allowed the team to efficiently filter, evaluate, and respond to hundreds of funding applications, demonstrating its versatility in handling a wide range of company initiatives.
By transforming its increasingly cumbersome manual process into a dynamic and scalable system, the retailer now has the agility to efficiently manage sponsorships and other funding initiatives with confidence. With better data, streamlined workflows, and a focus on meaningful partnerships, the company is well-positioned to maximize its community impact for years to come.
Testimonials
“Working with Elevent transformed how we manage sponsorship and community investment programs across our brand portfolio, cutting our review time by more than half and allowing our team to focus on building meaningful partnerships. We were inundated with requests, and Brickroad helped to do a first pass and lower the number of requests we had to look at—allowing us to increase strength and fit with a fraction of the time. Their customizable approach respects the unique priorities of each brand and region while ensuring alignment with our corporate values.
Most importantly, Elevent’s transparent methodology eliminates inflated metrics, providing us with accurate insights into both costs and returns for every community initiative we support.”
Conclusion
This partnership exemplifies how the right technology solution can transform cumbersome manual processes into strategic advantages. By implementing Elevent’s sponsorship management platform, this leading Canadian retailer achieved remarkable operational efficiencies and enhanced the quality and impact of its community investments across Canada.
The retailer now benefits from data-driven decision-making, improved cross-team collaboration, and greater alignment between corporate objectives and regional and brand priorities. Most importantly, the company can now focus its resources on building meaningful community relationships rather than managing spreadsheets.
To transform your sponsorship program from an administrative burden to a strategic advantage, please contact us to learn more.
